(Patriot Insider) – Americans are officially done with COVID. A recent Axios poll found that only 9% of Americans still believe COVID is a serious crisis. Everyone else is moving on and it’s really about time.
The pandemic was blown out of proportion from the beginning and the devastating effects of the most tyrannical responses are still being felt in many areas of the country. Nowhere, however, was there greater economic damage done than in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
In both of these states, Democratic governors took it upon themselves to become little tyrant rulers, shutting down businesses as they saw fit and causing economic crises still being felt by residents today.
It’s no wonder people are fleeing these states left and right.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf had the most heavy-handed responses to COVID of anywhere in the country. They took advantage of their emergency powers like few others, shutting down and restricting businesses like we’ve never seen in America.
They may have been among the worst but they certainly weren’t the only executives who destroyed their states economies in the name of “public health safety.”
According to federal data, only 11 states have more jobs now than they did at the start of the pandemic while around 20 states are down less than 3% but could easily recover these jobs should current trends hold.
However, neither Pennsylvania nor Michigan fall into either of these categories.
Wolf and Whitmer led the strictest lockdowns in the country and issued edict after edict forcing more than 30% of all businesses in their states to close. That’s almost twice the closures of the median state.
Naturally, these orders caused unprecedented job loss, skyrocketing unemployment, and the weakest recoveries in the country.
State data shows Pennsylvania is down 235,000 jobs, a 3.9% decrease, while Michigan is down 152,700 jobs, a 3.4% decrease.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that Wolf and Whitmer abused their authority to cancel businesses and damage their states’ economies, they did it while flouting their own rules and edicts whenever they saw fit.
Wolf created a business waiver process which changed the waiver status of over 500 businesses during the shutdown. The way the waiver process worked had no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever and businesses were being approved or rejected rapidly without explanation.
The state Auditor General, also a Democrat, even criticized Wolf’s waiver process, calling it subjective and unfair.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, Gov. Whitmer behaved like a little tyrant queen, shutting down businesses and making up rules based on her own personal opinions. For example, she allowed landscapers to return to work but not roofers. Where was the so-called science to back that decision up?
Whitmer was also caught violating her own social distancing rules at an East Lansing restaurant while Wolf handed out approved business waivers to his and his family’s personal businesses.
Both Whitmer and Wolf carried on as if they were untouchable but fortunately the people rose up and shut them down.
Whitmer was eventually stopped by the Michigan Supreme Court, which struck down her orders, finding the legislature delegated too much of its authority. In Pennsylvania, voters took to the ballot box and voted to amend the state constitution to limit his emergency declaration authority and require legislative approval for extensions.
More than a dozen other states have passed new laws to prevent this kind of abuse of power in the future for any new “emergencies.”
Despite causing catastrophic damage to their states, neither Wolf nor Whitmer are doing much to help their economies, or residents, recover.
Last month, Whitmer vetoed an income tax rate reduction, calling it unaffordable even with substantial revenue growth and $8 billion in unspent state and federal revenue at her disposal.
In Pennsylvania, Wolf is refusing to ease the tax burden on residents and is instead implementing a carbon tax, without the legislature’s involvement, and dragging the state into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) which will only result in residents’ electric bills to soar 30% higher with no meaningful reduction of carbon emissions.
No wonder people are moving out. According to recently released Census data, both states are seeing their major metropolitan areas shrinking substantially. Pittsburgh leads the nation with the largest natural decline in population, with a loss of 10,383 people between 2020 and 2021 while Detroit ranks sixth with a loss of 4,466 people.
Further U-HAUL data shows both states are in the bottom ten states for net inbound moves in 2021.
It’s time for major change in both of these states, starting with the governors.
Copyright 2022. PatriotInsider.org
It is time for major changes in all democrat run states, they are the ones who over did it with all their destructive laws during covid. When we had the Polio scare no state shut down like we have for covid and no one was ordered to wear masks that don’t work or forced to get vaccinated or they would lose their job. This covid pandemic was all about scaring the masses, power, control, money and lie after lie so people would follow like sheep!